With over 20 years of experience covering the Steelers for the Observer-Reporter, Dale Lolley will let you know the insider scoop. Dale can also be heard on the Steelers radio network pre-game show on WDVE-FM game days and Tuesday nights from 6 to 8 p.m. on ESPN 970-AM and WDVE during the season as a host of the Antonio Brown Show. Follow him on Twitter at @dlolleyor

Friday, January 27, 2012

Roethlisberger's words not damning

Some people will try to make a mountain out of a molehill, which is what is happening with the Steelers jettisoning offensive coordinator Bruce Arians.

But Ben Roethlisberger seems to have put things in proper perspective.

"When I get back, I'm going to go up to Mr. Rooney's office and ask him what he wants from me, what he wants from this offense, because I think that's a viable question for him," Roethlisberger told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Thursday following an AFC practice at Hickam Air Force Base. "He's our owner and our boss, so I really would like to know kind of what he wants and where he sees our offense going because I'd like to tell him where I see us going."

Roethlisberger is 100 percent correct, though he didn't identify which Rooney, Dan or Art II, that he was speaking about.

The bottom line is that Dan Rooney has the title of chairman and Art II that of team president. If they were unhappy with the direction of the offense, they were free to express it.

In fact, Art did just that a couple of years ago, saying the team needed to run the ball more effectively.

And you know what, the Steelers made that a point of emphasis in 2010.

But the offense obviously took a step backward in 2011, though the defense's lack of forced turnovers certainly didn't help.

Still, the point is that Art Rooney II or Dan Rooney or whoever made the call for Arians to go - I believe it was Dan - was perfectly within their rights to do so. They are, after all, the guys writing the checks.

And this isn't out of character for the Steelers. Remember, back in 1989, Dan Rooney ordered Chuck Noll to fire linebackers coach Jed Hughes.

If Noll can be ordered to fire an assistant - one that Noll liked - why not Mike Tomlin?

30 comments:

adamg
said...

Love to be a fly on the wall at that meeting...

Obviously, BR got the message that his and the offense's play wasn't good enough this year and needs to improve. Kudos to him for taking the initiative to sit down with the ownership to find out their thouhgts. I just hope what he hears doesn't go in one ear and out the other.

Couldn't you also say that the offense failing to score hurt the defenses chances to get turnovers? Since we never forced teams to play from behind opposing offenses had no urgency to go downfield and score. They could play conservatively knowing that our offense wasn't going to put up that many points.

This is why teams like the packers/saints and NE have often gotten lots of turnovers. Teams attack them recklessly because they know they need to score to keep up. Teams playing us don't have that worry.

Thats not the whole story. Our defense needs some work but I still believe the offense is the cause of more of the teams problems.

I think our biggest issue was not have a bigger "red zone" targets. Our little receivers are great at separating in space, but when the field shrinks in the red zone, you need people who can make a play when they are covered. Look at the touchdown scores in this league.

I agree with the comments here. I also just don't understand how Big Ben can't see that there has consistently been an issue with scoring in the red zone with this team. It wasn't just this yr. They haven't broken the top 10 in scoring (PPG) since 2007 (9). For a perenial SB contender, that just isn't good enough and shows that the D carries this team yr in an yr out. Something does have to change. Yards don't matter, points do.

IMHO, BR would be wise not to offer his opinion or defend the offense. When the boss has made a decision, he doesn't want to hear what you think.

As for needing tall receivers, you don't necessarily need that if you have well designed routes and/or you have a running game that's capable of pounding the ball in, which, in turn, makes the defense play more honestly and opens up more possible ways to score.

I don't think we need taller players, we need more physical players. A guy like Anquan Boldin is only 6'1" tall, only an inch taller than Mike Wallace, but Wallace comes in at 199 while Boldin is 223. That 25 pounds makes a huge difference.

Add this to our lack of more than 1 TE threat and not using the RBs as weapons and you have an offense that struggled in the redzone.

Ben's words aren't nearly as bad as they look. TheFan has the audio up there, they totally left out some other key statements and made it appear that the article was Ben talking because Arians got fired.

Like Anonymous above mentioned, hearing the words (instead of reading snippets) gives Ben's words the proper context. On one of the fan sites, people who were ripping Ben about being arrogant and power-hungry changed their tune quickly after actually hearing the way he said it.

Interestingly, The Fan morning guys all said that "media Ben" is far different from everywhere else Ben. They said he never speaks/talks like in any other situation. Phony is the word that popped into my head right away. I think I'd take how he sounded with a grain of salt.

Who are we kidding? All of our receivers are 6' tall burners who can run by the coverage, which is all fine and dandy, that's how Arians preferred things. His gameplans were centered around our athletic receivers making plays. However, if it wasn't a long bomb TD then the receivers in the red zone were pretty ineffective. That TD leaders list being riddled wit big bodied athletes is no coincidence, the Steelers need to find a bigger, badder target to help Ben. Look around the league, all the elite QB's have a big target except Ben.

Looking around at some stats, I have been pretty amazed what I have seen.

For instance, 15 of Ben's 21 TD passes have been from in the Redzone. That surprises me.

I started looking at our FG attempts on the year. 31, but you see NE had 33. I am thinking they must have been longer attempts due to our Redzone struggles, but was surprised to see similarities.

50+ - both kickers 2 tries40-49 - both took 1130-39 - We took 8, they took 620-29 - We took 8, they took 131-19 - We took 2, they took 1

I find that interesting. That means they struggled inside they stalled inside the 20 more than we did...or at least that what the stats would tell us, but they mislead.

We punted 59 times, they punted 57 times. They scored 513 points...we scored 325. They only averaged about 50 yards more than we did per game.

This leads me to a conclusion, the lack of TOs really hurt us. We took the ball away 15 times. NE, whose defense is bad, had 11 Fumble recoveries and 23 interceptions. That is insane compared to us. Not only was our O not very good, our D didn't help our cause. I know any D built on OLBs who loses them will struggle, but wow!

Arians had to do a lot of tricky things in the end zone, such as that end around to wallace in the broncos game, to scores

why we don't throw more to our TEs in the end zone I don't know. Remember the Saunders TD in KC? That's some natural ability we could use this season. I don't particularly have a hard on for the guy like many seem to have, but he's got potential to help us in those situations

and like always, if our tackles didn't need so much help Heath would not have to stay in blocking all the time. Especially in the red zone. With Gilbert no longer a rookie and Colon, hopefully, coming back healthy we might get that chance. So long as Gilbert's transition goes smoothly

In terms of red zone scoring percentage, the Steelers were @ 51% - 17th in the league.

http://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/red-zone-scoring-pct

Some of the teams with higher percentages in the red zone are a little surprising - Detroit leads the league @ 66.13%, while a plethora of non-playoff teams like the Jets, Vikings, Carolina, Tennessee, Buffalo, Chicago, and Philadelphia are ahead of the Steelers.

I agree Ben has the right to ask questions and sure Art will give him the answer that the scoring offense was not good and since he the QB he has to wind a way to improve.he has the weapons and needs to get the job done. The Red zone their our options in our Big TE Miller and Saunders but they are always used as blockers instead, the easy answer is improve the OL.

Dale can you comment on Tomlin saying that Arians retired when that is clearly not the case. Was that Tomlin's words or do you think he was just following what the powers that be told him to say?

My guess is it was suggested he phrase that way, Arians didn't like his departure none too much and decided to set the record straight and make the organization look a little dysfunctional at the same time. (which at the moment, they kind of do)

It will be interesting to see what Arians contract in Indy looks like. Will he sign a 1yr contract? Or will it be multiple years? Will Peyton or Luck have to talk him into signing a new deal every year?People that compare ArtII to Jerry Jones are suffering from tunnel vision.